PM vows not to rest on laurels

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Two anti-logging protesters were removed from Parliament House today after interjecting during Prime Minister John Howard's address to the National Press Club.

The pair shouted, Stop the Logging in Tasmania, during Mr Howard's speech in the Great Hall.

Mr Howard continued to speak over the chants, and security guards escorted the protesters from the Great Hall.

Mr Howard said choice was a golden thread running through all the coalition's policies and a founding principle of the Liberal Party.

He said politicians had to trust the capacity of the Australian people to choose what was best for them and their families.

"By all means let us have a safety net as we do, by all means have the fair Australian approach of always making sure that people, through no fault of their own, who fall by the wayside, are looked after and helped back on their feet and given another go," Mr Howard said.

"That is the great genius that Australia is able to achieve."

Australia's social system was not as harsh as that in the United States nor as soft as many European countries, he said.

"We're not as harsh on welfare as the Americans are - I would never want us to be," Mr Howard said.

"Their jail populations are testament to the failure of some of those harsh policies.

"But we're not as paternal as so many of the Europeans are and their slow growth rates and the outdated industrial relations policies are testament to that.

"We have got it right, we have got it in the middle and part of the reason why we have got right is that we trust the Australian people to know what is best for themselves and that is why I am so passionately committed to the notion of choice in all our policies."

Mr Howard vowed he would never rest on his laurels and said he hoped Australians believed that voting for the coalition was the best thing they could do for themselves and their country.

"I have never taken you for granted, I never will take the Australian people for granted, I will always believe that the Australian people will make the right decisions on their future and also for their nation," he said.

"The last thing, my friends, that I would ever do is to rest on my laurels.

"I do not believe that I am entitled to be re-elected on Saturday.

"I hope that the Australian people will believe that I have done enough and I offer enough sense of hope and direction for the future and that I have sufficiently defined my goals for the future that they believe that the best thing that they could do for themselves and their nation would be to re-elect a coalition government.

"And if that were to occur, I will regard it as a great honour and from Monday we'll set about the great task of building on our achievements of the last eight and a half years and pursing the goals that I've outlined to you today."